About Honinbo

The Honinbo tournament is the oldest and the most prestigious in Japan. It is sponsored by the Mainichi Newspaper, the champion prize is 32 million Japanese Yen (about US$ 303 thousands).

After a complex preliminary, eight players enter into league and they play each other once and the winner becomes the challenger. Time limits are 5 hours each except in the final, where each players has 8 hours.

Honinbo tournament is a place for creating records of consecutive titles, in its sixty years' history, total four players won Honorary Honinbo.

Takagawa Shukaku

achieved 9 consecutive titles,

Sakata Eio

achieved 7 consecutive titles,

Ishida Yoshio

achieved 5 consecutive titles, and

Cho Chikun

9p owned the record of 10 consecutive titles and he won Honinbo titles for a total of 12 times.